My wife, a retired schoolteacher, loves to read everything that I write even though she doesn’t understand the technical nature of what I write. One of the questions that she asks me most often is where I get ideas for things to write about. She also constantly asks me who my greatest muse is. A muse is someone who inspires an artist or writer and my muses are my readers. I write for my readers. I try to write articles or factoids that will meet their expectations and needs. I also get ideas for articles by reading what others have written and that’s what prompted me to write this factoid.
I write mostly for the diy market because I have over forty years experience as a do-it-yourselfer, with experience that runs the gamut from auto mechanics to building houses and other structures from the foundation up and I gained that expertise from working with masters in those fields. I have also read many articles written by people who claimed to have done something or who seem to think that they know how something should be done but it’s obvious to those of us have the expertise that they have never done it and obvious that they don’t really know how it should be done. Hence the question that I started this Factoid with, “Should you write a diy factoid?”
In many cases a writer doesn’t have to be an expert on or in the subject that he or she writes about, they simply need to know how to do research and they need to know how to interpret that research and produce an article based on those findings. Newspaper writers do that all the time and that’s perfectly ok for the kind of writing that news reporters do but there are times when it’s not ok for a writer to do that and writing “How-To” articles for the diy market is one of those times. A “How-To” article based purely on written research can be a very dangerous thing.
“A little knowledge is a dangerous thing,” meaning that a small amount of knowledge can cause people to think they are more expert than they really are. That’s especially dangerous when you are dealing with subjects like electricity, plumbing, auto repair, etc because an error of commission or an error of omission when writing about those subjects can get someone seriously injured or worse. In other words, what I’m saying is that unless you have actually done the work and done it correctly, please don’t try to teach someone else how to do it. Those of us who know how to do it can spot the mistakes and some of them are very dangerous mistakes in articles written by people with a little knowledge but the people who have no knowledge of the subject and are looking to learn from the “expert” can be hurt by your “little knowledge.”
Alexander Pope in his 1709 essay, An Essay on Criticism, wrote, “A little learning is a dangerous thing; drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring: there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking largely sobers us again.” The wise man realizes just how little he really knows about any subject. Those of us who are experts have learned that lesson. We have learned to realize our limitations and stay within those limitations when writing about anything where our lack of expertise could cause someone else harm, physically or financially. When writing for the diy market, the old axiom, “write about what you know best,” definitely holds true.
The last thing that I want to do is to stifle anyone’s desire to write, I simply want to point out that there are plenty of opportunities for creative writing without trying to apply that talent to a genre that you may not be qualified to write in.
